Free Trouble At Lone Spur by Roz Denny Fox

frown, Gil stood and removed his hat.
    “What? Oh, nothing.” She repeated the procedure with the other hooves and found the same crooked nails in all but one.
    “You frown at nothing?” Gil tilted back his hat and sauntered over to take a look. By the third hoof, he whistled through his teeth. “Damn!”
    “You swear at nothing?” Liz restrained a smirk.
    “That jerk!” he exploded. “I had no idea…” Off came the Stetson again and he began the signature tap, tap, tap on his thigh. “I fired him because I smelled liquor on his breath. I don’t tolerate anyone drinking on the job.”
    “I guess you didn’t follow him around and check his work.” She shrugged.
    He paused in the middle of tapping; an expression of surprise then chagrin furrowed his brow. “Look, ten years ago my pop’s weakness for alcohol nearly lost us the ranch. I sold off all but thirty horses, dropped everyone from the payroll but Rafe, and the two of us put in twenty-hour days, seven days a week, to dig this place out of bankruptcy. There weren’t enough hours in the day. We handled breeding, training, shoeing, built fence, mucked stalls—you name it. Now I have twenty men on my payroll. All experts.”
    “Twenty men and one woman,” she said. “And as an expert I recommend you let this horse run barefoot and riderless for about six weeks.” She flipped her rope off Sand Digger’s neck and walked back to change the information on his card. “I don’t drink, and I drive a very straight nail, Mr. Spencer, so you won’t need to check up on me, either. Maybe you can take that extra hour or so a day I’ll be saving you and spend it with your kids.”
    Gil stiffened. She’d hit a raw nerve. Ginger complained to anyone who’d listen that he’d neglected her in favor of the ranch. Neglect was a big issue in the custody hearing, even though Gil had hired Ben and cut back to ten-hour days. Little by little, as the boys grew and spent more time with him out on the range, he’d let longer hours in the saddle creep up again. But he didn’t neglect his sons and he didn’t need some woman looking at him with sorrowful calf eyes, suggesting that he did.
    “Are you fixin’ to fire me again?” Liz drawled softly, wishing he wasn’t such a hard man to read. She could see he’d worked up a head of steam but honestly didn’t know why. “I only meant you can trust me to do a good job of shoeing.”
    Gil stared at her neat array of tools. The card she’d been writing on fluttered to the ground. He picked it up, realizing at a glance that if all her records were this precise, she was definitely telling the truth. “Guess I’m kind of touchy when it comes to my family,” he said gruffly, handing her back the card.
    Liz filed it and filled one out for the next gelding, Coppertone’s Pride. Named for his perfect all-over tan, she reasoned—and then her mind flipped back to what Melody had said about her teacher’s pictures of family. Mom, dad, kids. It seemed grandparents were acceptable, as long as there were two. But one parent and child? Apparently not. By Miss Woodson’s definition, she and Melody weren’t a family. But of course they were, the same as tens of thousands of other single-parent families in the world. Liz would have to have a talk with Miss W. She needed a new supply of pictures.
    “C’mon, boys,” Gil called. “Mount up. Time to check fence.” He squinted at the sun. “We’ll mosey toward the river about noon,” he told Liz.
    “Do we hafta go with you?” The boys stopped tossing the football. “Riding fence is boring. Can’t we stay here and play? We brought a Frisbee, too.”
    “No. Remember, I said idle hands make mischief.”
    “Aw, Dad. We said we were sorry.”
    Gil turned back to Liz, giving an apologetic shrug. She wasn’t sure if he was asking her to let them stay or if he was irked at having her witness a little family discord. “I’ll keep an eye on them if you’d like,” she